will using a spanned volume (a volume spanned across two seperate partions in win2k3) to host the exchange databases cause any problems with exchange 2003.

we have an exchange 2003 server with a volume hosting the databases that is 300Gb. the volume is dynamic and was spanned to include a seperate partition of 200Gb. this was done because the 300Gb volume is running out of space.

these drives and partitions are actually disk space on a SAN and not seperate physical drives or partitions on the local server.

now the E drive that has the exchange databases for this server is 500gb, but includes two seperate partitions (300gb and 200gb partitions). does anyone think this is going to cause a problem? if so, i know that deleting and recreating the volume will cause the data to be lost, but i could create a volume after creating a 500gb partition. i just hate to have to move that data off and then back on. does anyone know of a method to delete the volume and recreate it without loosing the data?

A dynamic disk contains dynamic volumes, such as simple volumes, spanned volumes, striped volumes, mirrored volumes, and RAID-5 volumes. With dynamic storage, you can perform disk and volume management without the need to restart Windows

You should not have any problems. As extending the volume will not affect the your exchange database (the basic purpose of allowing spanned volumes to be extended is to add more free space to your volume)

Two seperate partitions (300gb and 200gb partitions), you will find both of them with same drive letter of E: in windows 2003 Disk management and the total disk space of E: will be 500 GB in your windows explorer view

i guess i am just a bit concerned on how exchange will handle writing and reading the database across two seperate partitions. if this is not really a concern then i am going to leave it alone. since the two partions are on drives that are really part of a storage tek SAN with hardware failover, then i am not worried about hardware failure or raid on the server itself (except of course the system and exchange log partitions which are both mirrored).

When you need to create a volume but do not have enough unallocated space for the volume on a single disk, you might be able to create a volume of sufficient size by combining sections of unallocated space from multiple disks into one spanned volume. The areas of unallocated space used to create spanned volumes can be different sizes. Spanned volumes are organized so that the space allocated to the volume on one disk gets filled up and then, starting at the next disk, the space allocated to the volume on that disk gets filled up.

Spanned volumes allow you to get more data on a disk without using mount points. By combining the space used by multiple disks into one spanned volume, you can free drive letters for other uses and enable the creation of a large volume for file system use.

Increasing the capacity of an existing volume is called extending. Existing spanned volumes formatted with the NTFS file system can be extended by the amount of unallocated space on all disks. However, after a spanned volume is extended, no portion of it can be deleted without deleting the entire spanned volume. Disk Management formats the new area without affecting any existing files on the original spanned volume. You cannot extend spanned volumes formatted with the FAT file system.

Before making any changes to spanned volumes, you should first back up all the information on the volume

Spanned volumes cannot be mirrored or striped and do not offer fault tolerance. If one of the disks containing a spanned volume fails, the entire volume fails and all the data on it is lost

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